A three day visit to St Petersburgh allowed me to travel on the wonderful metro system, take a transect from the baroque splendor and neoclassical elegance of the center, past Soviet public housing to the summer palace of Peter The Great. He designed the city as a window on Europe and it remains one of Europe's most beautiful cities, part Venice, part Amsterdam, with a Tsarist Russian legacy of palaces for the wealthy and Dostoyevsky's novels of urban modernity and a Soviet bequest that combines the gorgeous Metro as well as the bleak blocks of public housing.
The metro system is a wonder; inexpensive, extensive and beautiful (© John Rennie Short)
Bleak blocks of Soviet public housing (© John Rennie Short)
The over the top Baroque ostentation of Peterhof; Peter The Great's Summer Palace (© John Rennie Short)
Along the banks of the Neva (© John Rennie Short)
The busy port (© John Rennie Short)
